New job, new life. Where will tomorrow take me? 🙂 It always boggles my mind how something unexpected happens every day even though so many perceive life as mundane. This weekend, there was the earthquake in Nepal and various friends who reconnected with me. Maybe moving back to one’s hometown isn’t as unglamorous as one may perceive. There’s the piano here… I’d like to master that enough to start a new instrument one day…. perhaps ukulele. So many aspirations…But what is life without a little hope?

And so I settle into yet another chapter of my life, its pages unpenned. I’m not sure where I will end up tomorrow, just as I had no idea what I would be doing today. We can only plan, but not all that is planned will reveal itself as we imagine it. Despite the sadness I feel in what quiet minutes of solitude due to my choice to end any hope of a long term romantic relationship with my most recent boyfriend, I know that I’ve made progress. I am able to accept that life is tragic, wonderful, mysterious, unpredictable, and as it should be. This knowledge gives me the ability to conjure harmony, curiosity and smiles in the smallest of daily marvels.

So, I finally did something I REALLY wanted to do since I don’t know when: I quit my job and purchased plane tickets to see the other side of the world. I had a passport already as I had fantasized about doing this for quite some time. As soon as I quit my job, I met someone whom I started dating so I came back from the other side of the world to see him after a month overseas. We had talked about moving away somewhere else and finding jobs in the same city to see each other before I left. He has no idea how many times I fantasized about staying overseas and just seeing more of the world, learning foreign languages, living new lifestyles, seeing the world through the eyes of many others. I met so many interesting people, tasted unfamiliar foods, smelled unfamiliar scents, visited places I’d never heard of and saw and lived lifestyles I’d never experienced before. In the end, I’m back here at home because I value one-on-one human connection more than I do worldly experiences.

This morning, as we parted, I asked him, “When will we see each other again?” I’ve never seen anyone so stumped by such a simple question. He was so floored by this question, he actually sat down for 10 minutes thinking even though we were on the way out the door. He still hadn’t answered my question when we parted ways. I have to keep marveling how much I am willing to give up for just a few minutes with someone I want to spend more time with…Isn’t life ironic/ funny that way?

A photo I shot of a site I visited only two weeks ago

During my multiple plane rides, I caught up on movie-watching. I saw a movie during my first plane ride called Eat, Pray, Love. I enjoyed watching the movie but couldn’t quite understand it because the protagonist goes off on her world adventures after divorcing her husband who she chooses to leave for her dreams to travel the world. It seems I should be able to better identify with the main character, but I was stumped by the ending: she falls in love with another guy across the world. I don’t know if that is how the book version ends and I can see what the plot was trying to get at: she was brave enough to try something outside of the expectations of society. …But I just I can’t understand it completely because I would choose to stay with the husband again and again. Maybe I’m just a different person. Of course, I’ve been divorced too, but had it not been too painful to stay in that hell hole of a marriage, I perhaps…just perhaps…I would have…. And then I wouldn’t be who I am today: my own person, so pain is sometimes a good thing. I wish nature/ human desire wouldn’t complicate life. I know exactly how I’d live my life if I were single but not being single just complicates things. I am sure my boyfriend feels the exact same way at the this moment as he really didn’t have to consider when he would see me again while I was away. I guess I’ve chosen a recluse for a boyfriend this time around. Maybe life would have been less lonely across the world. Only time will tell.